Federal officials have been quietly eyeing the Comox Valley fisheries office in their search for savings for at least a year and a half, the Echo has learned.
The Comox Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) office was identified for "consolidation" along with four other locations as far back as April 2012, according to documents obtained through the Access to Information Act.
Critics of the government's plan to cut $100 million from the ministry over three years say the elimination of an administrative position and the movement of enforcement officers to Campbell River represents a gutting of the department.
"The Comox office has been on the block before and it survived," said Doug Swift, a former DFO habitat management technologist who worked out of the Comox office. "I don't know if it will survive this time."
Swift said there weren't even enough habitat staff at the office when he worked there.
"The DFO presence in habitat management is significantly reduced," he said. "The travel budgets for those that are remaining are reduced.
"The farther they are away the harder it is to respond in a timely manner."
Ministry officials selected Comox alongside Clearwater, Hazelton and Pender Harbour for consolidation, an April 10, 2012 email from Allan MacLean, DFO's director general conservation and protection, to Susan Farlinger regional director general, Pacific Region reveals.
"For the Pacific Region there was a target of five offices," he wrote. "We are presently working on our communications strategies for both employees and industry. We would be looking at deploying officers affected by the closures to other locations in the Pacific Region."
Quesnel was added to the list of affected offices days later.
The Harper government has clamped down on communications surrounding the DFO cuts and officials from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans were not made available for this article by press time.
Swift has been consulting for a Courtenay business that must seek comment from DFO and says already things move too slowly.
"It takes several months relatively routine project through," he said, adding having locally-based staff carries some important benefits. "They take a certain ownership of issues.
"If you are responsible for an area you take a more personal interest in dealing with those types of issues."
DFO enforcement officers enforce the Fisheries Act, protect fishery resources and fish habitats through patrols on land, in the sea and in the air and are supposed to educate the public about fisheries resources and habitat protection.
Last week, for example, DFO officials warned of poison shellfish being sold online through a Port Hardy Buy and Sell group page of Facebook.
MP John Duncan confirmed the government has been looking at consolidating offices for "quite some time" in a bid to balance Canada's finances by 2015, but says he fought to keep the local office opened.
He spoke with both Keith Ashfield, former fisheries minister, and Gail Shea, who currently handles the portfolio on the subject.
"I've wanted to see it go a different way. But she's doing what she's able to do," he said. "That's where it sits right now"
The cuts don't involve any reductions in the numbers of fishery officers, he stressed.
"I'm continuing that conversation," he said. "I've held up my end. I can't make people do what I want."
Duncan said the idea is to consolidate officers into larger offices and deploy people more effectively.
"I operate with different parameters," he said. "They've got a whole department to run."
He may not have won when it come to keeping enforcement officers in Comox, but Duncan said his efforts to push finance minister Jim Flaherty in the direction of fishery protection didn't go unheeded. The 2013 Economic Action Plan dedicates all funds collected through the sale of the Salmon Conservation Stamp to the Pacific Salmon Foundation.
"When you buy a fishing license there's a fee that's to go towards salmon enhancement," he said. "It's not that we haven't had some successes in achieving progress especially in habitat restoration."
Larry Peterson, who met with Duncan on behalf of the Courtenay and District Fish and Game Protective Association, says he's all for getting rid of government waste.
"Reducing bureaucracy is a good thing," he said. "In this case we're not talking about bureaucracy. We're talking about on the ground assistance to the public."
Peterson says he's also disappointed that the government has yet to release a study of Chinook salmon that's been conducted along the east coast of Vancouver Island over the past two years.
"It's time they concluded it and gave us some results," he said.
